The Vitality of Being Eloquent
by Aelibia
Summary: Daichi centric, an augmented version of number nine in A Temporary Madness. Daichi is pulling all his oratory skills out of his back pocket for this one, folks. How else could he explain why the Akatsuki complex was burned to the ground?


**A/N:** I want to read a Samus/SpacePirate fic. Am I a bad person? Will I go to hell for even considering a fic of such crackiness? Does anyone even understand what I just said? Would it even be anatomically possible? Dammit…

Done listening to Justin Timberlake, Mika, Fergie, Rihanna, Groove Armada, Aly & AJ, The Goo Goo Dolls, Lily Allen, Norah Jones, Evanescence, Ciara, Celine Dion, Michelle Branch, Timberland, Stevie Wonder, Enrique Iglesias, Kelis, Maroon 5, Plain White T's, and Pink. Can you do the one-two step, bitch? Does your milkshake bring all the boys to the yard? Tobi can. Tobi's does.

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_Being a kid is nice,_ Daichi thought as he watched the Akatsuki complex burn down. _No one is even blaming me for anything…yet._ Tugging on his mother's hand, Daichi struggled vainly to get away, but to no avail. She'd been clinging to him since she found him sitting calmly in the kitchen while the walls slowly began to curl and smoke in submission to the flames, and Daichi had a vague notion that he wouldn't be going anywhere for a very long while.

Looking to his left, Daichi smiled at his dad, who was gazing at the building with what could only be an expression of complete, total guilt. _I wonder why...he didn't do anything. Maybe he's worried about the laundry._ To the right was Hidan, abnormally silent as he glared accusingly at Itachi, who was staring innocently off in the direction of the town, muttering, "The villagers will be here soon. This smoke can be seen for miles." _Well, _duh._ It's like a million miles high and black and poofy. You could probably see it for _thousands_ of miles._

Zetsu, standing near Itachi and also looking towards the little town, replied with a hint of irritation, "We may have to move again. _This is most inconvenient."_ Daichi rolled his eyes in their direction, provoking a glare from Itachi—_why does he always see everything? I bet he knows who did it, too. I think I'm gonna_—Daichi's thoughts were abruptly cut off as his mother rushed over to Kakuzu's side, yanking him along to talk about construction prices or kitchen electrical appliance manufacturers or something to the Falls ninja. Thrashing violently, Daichi finally managed to free himself from his distracted mother's vice-like grip and scurried over to Tobi's side, who was probably looking in the general direction of the building with some sort of look on his face. Submissive? Passionate? Gleeful? Suicidal? Angry? Exhausted? _I wish he wouldn't wear that mask. He's worse than Itachi sometimes. I never know what he's going to do._

Deciding not to wait until things got interesting, Daichi slipped _almost_ unnoticed from the group—Itachi caught him sneaking away—into the woods to find his favorite hiding place: a small cave behind an even smaller waterfall. Sitting on a mossy rock in the center of the stony dome, Daichi breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be away from all the grown-ups for a while. They just didn't understand him, and definitely wouldn't agree with his completely justifiable reasons for starting a fire in the sink.

'There are times in life,' Daichi's father told him once, 'where it's just not the right time to say some things, yeah.' Although Daichi supposed fires were irrelevant to his remarks on his parents' suspicious trips to a local farmer's racehorse barn, this was probably not a good time to start explaining things to people; trying to force some sense into the heads of his parents and guardians while they were staring with disbelief at the fruits of his labor wouldn't go over too well for several more hours at least. The cave was fully stocked with chips, soda, and a bottle of sake Daichi had never worked up the courage to try, so Phase One was at the ready. Once everyone noticed he was gone, the immediate conclusion to his disappearance would be that he'd been kidnapped or murdered or something equally likely to happen to a ten-year-old boy surrounded by a fairly large group of elite ninja, and a frantic search party would commence, setting out to find his body. Then, at the appropriate time, Daichi would suddenly be discovered in a planned location—the ideal discoverer was his father, who would offer more hugs than verbal lashings at first—and whatever havoc he'd been wreaking earlier would be at the back of everyone's minds except Itachi, who didn't really count anyway as far as Daichi was concerned. He probably had a log book of everything Daichi ever did that concerned him, because all he ever seemed to offer Daichi were stares and glares.

Absentmindedly opening some jalapeño-flavored potato chips, Daichi let his mind wander to the events leading up to the daring escape to his cave, as it was important to intimately know every detail in order to change them. It started with the exploding clay that he'd finally gotten his dad to give him—"Well, you don't exactly have the means to detonate it…I guess you can mess around with it a little, yeah. Show me what you have when you're done and we'll go out and finish it up together." Well, there was his escape from the palm of his mother's hand: it was _obviously_ his father's fault. That guilty look from earlier really made sense after all. Daichi felt a little bad at laying the whole thing on his dad's shoulders—the poor guy got battered daily with teasing from most of the guys and nagging from his mom—but his dad would most likely forgive him. After all, what he'd created was art in his father's eyes. Daichi didn't really understand how blowing up a building could be considered art, even by the craziest nutcases (and Daichi was in daily contact with people who fit that very description) but at least now he had an escape from both parents' righteous wrath. As long as he had them defending him, the rest of the Akatsuki would let the situation go. Except for Itachi, who would wander off to record the incident in his log book. _I'm _sure_ it exists._

So now the only thing there was to be worried about was where they would sleep. A hotel was out of the question as far as Kakuzu was concerned (the hotels in the area were fancy and high-priced), but maybe he'd be overruled this time. If worst came to worst, they could all go to the racehorse stables and spend half the night awake listening to Hidan crack jokes about haystack sex and looking for Daichi. In an opportunity like sleeping in a barn, one had to explore the surroundings properly, but apparently growing up meant you developed intolerance for such things somewhere along the way.

_Well, I think it's been long enough. I'm tired of thinking about this anyway. Analyzing is for adults. That's what mom said._ Daichi crumpled up his chip bag in a final sort of way, put it in the trashcan he had stolen from Tobi's room, peered warily past the cascading water into the trees beyond, crept around and out of the waterfall, and walked directly into Itachi's legs. The man offered no conversation, simply grabbed the back of Daichi's shirt and hauled him back to the clearing where a crowd of Akatsuki ninja, his mother, some villagers, and a guy in a suit waited with their arms crossed. Except his dad, who was failing to look fatherly and only succeeded in looking guiltier than before.

Dropped unceremoniously at his mother's feet, Daichi stared doe-eyed at his mother, who wasted no time in beginning her inevitable rant. _Women…_

"Daichi! How could you! First you set fire to the building, and then you run off and scare the hel—heck out of everyone! That is completely uncalled for, not to mention extremely dangerous!" Pausing to collect her thoughts, or perhaps gather chakra for a spanking from hell, Daichi chose this moment to intervene.

"How are you so sure it was me who did it, Mom?"

"Well, completely overlooking the fact that you were _very_ present at the scene of crime, you were suspiciously calm afterwards before disappearing. Good thing Itachi saw you leaving, or we'd _still_ be searching. And now I think you owe everyone an apology." A simultaneous nodding of heads followed her statement, reminding Daichi of a wheat field on a windy day and making it very hard not to start laughing. Thoughts rushing through his head like customers down at the brothel on a holiday, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath to collect the final draft of his alibi inside his head.

"Villagers, guardians, parents, and person wearing a suit: I thank you all for being here to witness this grand scheme of mine and for seeking proper punishments to those involved, which I'm sure just about anyone would do. Before you impale me with lawsuits and banish me to the corner, however, I ask you all to consider pre-events with me, the _very_ events leading up to this…this smoldering pile of foundations and the remnants of building material." Daichi waved his hand to the smoking complex, distinctly pleased at the number of faces that actually turned back to look at it. His mother narrowed her eyes, and his father glanced at the woods. _Perfect._ "Now, then. This morning at approximately eight hundred hours, I walked into the living room without a single evil thought in my head. Not like I think evil thoughts regularly or anything like that, but anyway…My father—known to the world as D—well…yeah, my father—was sitting on the couch playing with some clay like he normally does while he waits for my mom to go down to the barn with him, and I innocently decided to investigate in an innocent kind of way. _Innocently._ So I go over to where he's sitting and ask what he's doing. Not like I didn't know, but you can't just walk over to a horny artist and demand some of his medium right away. Setting up the conversation and things like that, you know." Most of the audience was walking away, smirking, blushing, or escaping to the woods at this point. Daichi grinned and continued.

"He gave me the usual art talk, but was very pleased when I got around to asking him for some of the clay. As some of you may know, giving his kind of clay to a small child would be considered to many child protection agencies to be in the 'irresponsible parental behavior code red' category, but it was handed to me nonetheless. The clay. To me. From my father. My father's clay given to me by my father. So in order to prove myself worthy of holding his clay in my tiny little hands, I—as any other child trying to prove themselves to his or her artist father would do—set about trying to work the clay exactly like the original artist, although it is more recommended to try out your own style. But I'm a child, for God's sake. A child who was given potentially dangerous material by his own father, not that he meant to cause harm in the long run, of course. But the fact remains that it was given to me by my father. Me. My father. My father gave it to me.

"Of course, I wasn't going to go all crazy like he sometimes does, and sought out a proper place to detona—I mean…play with the clay. Yes. Play. And I thought, the kitchen! It's a site of numerous explosions, fires, and general disaster, especially when someone besides my mom is cooking. Mom, you are the best cook in the whole world. I love you. So I put the clay in the sink, since it's pretty darn wet in there and would be safest. I didn't go outside because I didn't want to harm the ozone layer, like some of you people are doing this very second. Don't smoke, it fu—screws up your lungs, by the way. Then I went to look for some matches. Why? Because I wanted to observe and record the effects of a human fire on fancy mud, that's why. You don't have to be a scientist to do experiments, you know. I found some matches under the bed of that big blue guy over there. You will notice I am not using names. This is to protect the innocent _and_ guilty. So anyway, I found the matches in his room, which was completely lost on me. Why the hell would _he_ need matches? Anyway, I lit a match and set the clay on fire, which gave off a rather large explosion. I was mostly unharmed because I had taken cover under a kitchen chair with a cookie sheet. Not like I expected an explosion, I just…you never know with matches. They can be quite rebellious. So I sat in the middle of the kitchen floor in shock as the flames cons—consum—burned the kitchen wall and stuff off. By now you'd think my dad would've come in, but he was in the barn with mom by now, 'cos it took a while to set the experiment up. They like to think I don't know what goes on in that place.

"So by the time they came back it'd burnt up a large portion of the kitchen, and I was powerless to stop it since I was in shock and stuff on the floor and everything. My mom started yelling stuff about fire extinguishers and sanity and hit the evacuation button, and my dad grabbed me and took me outside. He knew exactly what he'd done, of course, so he was looking pretty darn guilty. The rest you guys have already heard or experienced. So there you go. That's what happened. With the clay. The clay that my dad gave me, which was his clay. That he gave me."

An awkward silence met Daichi's ears as he ended his speech, breathing slightly heavier than normal due to anticipation just as much as an obvious shortage of oxygen. The silence was expected, but the applause, however, was not. Several of the villagers started up the clapping and pretty soon mostly everyone joined in, excluding Daichi's mother, who'd gone off hunting for her husband, leaving a trail of angry huffs in the air as she ran. Within minutes the entire clearing was empty, save for a smirking Daichi and one very bemused Uchiha. Pulling a hastily-snatched potato chip bag out of his pocket with some effort and pulling the halves apart, Daichi gazed into the bag of crumbs as if he were looking into a crystal ball, his eyes graced with visions of a future including some very stressful, horse-filled nights. He smiled down at the cheap plastic and then abruptly held the bag out to the man beside him, who looked down and blinked his Sharingan eyes at Daichi's green ones.

"Chip?"


End file.
